This chapter charts how irregular migration was first identified in France and the UK as a social problem requiring state intervention. Building on theories of information processing, it explores the filters through which each government scanned their political and operational environment to identify and frame the issue. In the UK, a political preoccupation with limiting overall numbers of Commonwealth migrants led to measures to penalise ‘evasion of control’ in the late 1960s. In France, concerns about 'clandestine work' prompted a focus on irregular labour in 1970s, which built on earlier security priorities tied to the Algerian War. By locating the emergence of the issue in historical and cross-national context, our analysis highlights the contingent and selective nature of state knowledge production about irregular migration.

The last chapter deals with how the ‘Jewish Councils’ were connected to organised resistance groups and other forms of opposition. It assesses two central themes. First, it examines how the JR, the AJB, the UGIF-Nord and the UGIF-Sud were wittingly and unwittingly used by others as cloaks for clandestine activities. Overall, the very presence of these bodies in all three countries facilitated, to varying degrees, clandestine activities that would never have been possible without their existence. It is argued that the connections between official Jewish bodies and illegal subversive groups in Belgium and France were complex, manifold and fluid. Second, the chapter examines the active engagement of the organisations’ leadership and membership in these activities, and explains why the JR’s leadership’s absence of engagement in such activities is distinct from the situation in Belgium and France. The central aim is to explore the concepts of opposition and resistance in relation to the legal character of these bodies. Existing scholarship has focussed primarily on individuals who crossed the line between legality and illegality, outwardly conforming while also working outside the legal organisations. This chapter takes the analysis one step further and investigates whether and how the ‘Jewish Councils’ were used for clandestine activities in ways that extended beyond this individual level.